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5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side SUBSCRIBESIGN INEverything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideThe author of The Ministry of Special Cases and For the Relief of Unbearable Urges writes his own version of a family tree.By Nathan EnglanderApr 21, 2009 RODERICK 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/1/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideRODERICK MILLS1.Watch the husband and wife walking down Broadway together. Even looking at their backs, even from a distance, you can see thewife is making big sweeping points, advising. There is wisdom being shared. But she is a kindly woman, the wife. You can see this,too. Because every few paces, the wife slows and reaches toward the husband, hangs an arm around his shoulder, and pulls himclose. There is clearly love between them.2.If we weave through the crowd with a little gusto, we'll make progress. If we take advantage of the pause when the two stand by atable of trinkets -- bracelets and lighters and watches, all of them, oddly, embossed with the faces of revolutionaries -- we get closeenough to become suspicious of their relationship, about the nature of its husband-and-wifeness.3.The two stop right in the middle of Canal Street. The wife faces the husband, and the point she argues is so large, it's as if the wifebelieves traffic will stop for it when the light changes, as if, should the cars roll on, it's worth being run down to see her pointmade.It's then that we catch up, then that we're sure -- as the woman smiles and hooks her arm through the man's, guiding him safelyacross -- that the wife is not a wife and the husband not a 2/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideWhat they are, it seems clear now, is boyfriend and girlfriend. And that girlfriend, upon closer inspection, seems to be a cat-eyedand freckle-faced Bosnian. Standing next to her, looking ten years older and with a mess of curly hair, we see that the other one -the boyfriend one -- is just a little Jew. And recognizing the face, taking it in, we see that the little Jew is me.5.It's because of how they walk and talk, in the way their shoulders bump and how her lower back is held and released by him atevery corner, that we assume a different type of intimacy. There is an ease -- a certain safety, you could call it -- that just makes aperson think husband and wife. From a distance, it just seemed another thing.6.The argument that they -- that is, that she and I -- settle in the middle of Canal Street sounds, in a much truncated form, like this,with me earnest and at wit's end: "But what do you do if you're American and have no family history and all your most vividchildhood memories are only the plots of sitcoms, if even your dreams, when pieced together, are the snippets of movies thatplayed in your ear while you slept?"ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW"Then," the girl says, "those are the stories you tell."7.Her family tree is written into the endpapers of a Bible whose leather cover has worn soft as a glove. She was raised in the housein which her mother was raised, and her mother's mother, and in which, believe it or not, her great-grandmother was born. Thinkof this: The ancient photos around her had grown old on the walls.When the Bosnian came to America with her parents, they took the Bible, but the pictures, along with the still-living relatives inthem, were left 1
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideRODERICK MILLS8.We're still in the street, arguing over my family history gone lost, and I say what I always say to this girl who was swaddled in aquilt sewn from her grandmother's dresses: "Oh, look at me, my uncle shot Franz Ferdinand and started World War I -- then CountBalthus came to Sarajevo to paint a portrait of my mother playing badminton in white kneesocks." For this there's always a punchin the arm and a kiss to make up. This time I also want a real answer.9."What you do is tell the stories you have as best you can.""Even if they're about going to the mall? About eating bageldogs and kosher pizza?""Yes," she says."You don't mean that.""I don't mean that," she says. "You nd better stories than that." And looking at me, frustrated, "You can't, not really, know nothing!Tell me about your mother. Tell me an anecdote right 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/4/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side"Everything I know about my family on my mother's side wouldn't even make a whole story." And she knows enough of me, mygirl does, to know that it's true.10.The Bosnian, my bean -- and, admittedly, that's what I call her -- she lls me with con dence. I go from saying it's hopeless totelling her about the Japanese beetles, about the body in the stairwell, about the soldier with the glass eye. "You see," she says."There's story after story. Plenty of history to tell."11.My mother's father had two brothers, both of them long dead. My grandfather never told me about either brother. These are thestories he told me instead: "During Prohibition, we drank everything. Vanilla. Applejack. When I was down in Virginia, we used togo out to where the stills were hidden in the woods and buy moonshine. Always, you take a match to it rst. If it burns blue,you're all right. If it burns clear, then it's methanol. If it burns clear and you drink it, you go blind."12.Applejack, it's just hard cider. My grandfather told me how to make it. You take fresh cider and you put it in a jar and throw in abunch of raisins, for the sugar. You let it ferment, watching those raisins go fat over time. Then you put it in the freezer and youwait. Alcohol has a lower freezing point than water. When the ice forms, you take out the jar, you sh out the ice (or pour out theliquid), and what's not frozen, that's alcohol -- easy as pie. I tried it one Thanksgiving, when suddenly, even in suburbia, ciderabounds. I threw in the raisins. I waited and froze and skimmed and drank. I don't think I got drunk. I don't think anythinghappened. But neither did I go blind.ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW13.If you were to climb into my childhood head and look out from my childhood eyes, you'd see a world of Jews around you: theparents, the children, the neighbors, the teachers -- everyone a Jew, and everyone religious in exactly the same way. Now lookacross the street at the Catholic girl's house, and at the house next door to hers, where the Reform Jews live. Now what do yousee? Is it a blur? An empty space? If you are seeing nothing, if your answer is nothing, then you are seeing as I saw.14.Now that I'm completely secular, my little niece looks at me -- at her uncle -- through those old eyes. She asks my older brothersweetly, "Is Uncle Nathan Jewish?" Yes, is the answer. Uncle Nathan is Jewish. He's what we call an apostate. He means you noharm.15.My great-grandfather gave up on religion completely. And my grandfather told me why he did. This is true, by the by. Not true inthe way ction is truer than truth. True in both 1
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side16.What he told me is that his father and two other boys were up on the roof of a house in their village in Russia. One of the boys -not my great-grandfather -- had to pee and peed off that roof. What he didn't see below him was a rabbi going by.Like a story, every stream has an arc that has to come down somewhere. The boy pissed on the rabbi's hat. The three childrenwere brought before the anointed party. They were, all three, soundly and brutally beaten. The punishment meted out was aninjustice my grandfather couldn't abide. He thought, in Russia, in Yiddish, in his version, Fuck the whole lot, I'm done.17.Up until this story, all I knew was that our family was from Gubernia. That's where we hailed from. And when I tell my sweetBosnian, who also speaks some Russian, she shakes her head -- looking sad, as if maybe everything I know really isn't enough."Gubernia just means 'state,' " she says, "like a county. To say you were born in gubernia would be like saying you were born instate. As in, New York State or Washington State. To be from there is to be from everywhere.""Or nowhere," I say.18.It's when I'm asking my mother about the other side, about my grandmother's side, that she says, "Well, it's when Grandma'sgrandma, that is (and here, the middle-distance stare, the ticking off on ngers), when my mother's mother's mother came fromYugoslavia to Boston . . . " and that's when I stop her. Thirty-seven years old, and for the rst time, in writing this, I nd that mygreat-great-grandmother -- my people -- come from Yugoslavia. How does that not ever come up? I'm abbergasted, and I want tocall the Bosnian to say, "Hey, Neighbor, it's me, Nathan. Guess what?" But she is not the person to call with such news -- notanymore. That's how quickly things change. Some truths, you can hide them forever, but when you nally face them, nally take alook . . . well, with me and the Bosnian, it's done.ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW19.About Yugoslavia, about the news, my mother doesn't pity me over stories suppressed. She says, "You have nothing to complainabout. I had it worse in my not-knowing." Her uncle, my grandfather's brother, died at age eight of a brain tumor. There wasnothing to be done. A brain tumor killed the littlest brother of the three. My grandfather was twelve at the time, his middlebrother ten, and his dead-of-a-brain-tumor brother, eight. And my mother worried about every headache I had in my life. Sheworried about every little twitch and high fever in my childhood. She waited for the malady to start, the disease that eats thebrains of young boys.20.And then, in 2004 -- "That spring," my mother says -- she drives up to Boston because Cousin Jack needs a new hip, a newshoulder, a new valve; she drives up to Boston because Cousin Jack is getting t for a replacement part. There she learns adifferent story from Jack, different from the one she's carried her whole 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/6/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideMy grandfather, all of twelve, was crossing Commonwealth Avenue with his littlest brother, with Abner, when a car came over thehill and clipped him. Knocked little Abner from my grandfather's grip. Abner got up. Abner looked ne, except for his right hand.A deep cut in the hand that might have been of concern to the driver had he taken a closer look. Instead, he got out of the car,stared at the little Jewboys looking ne enough, and drove off.21.My grandfather led his brother home. Great-grandma Lily (my grandfather's mother) screamed in shock. A car? An accident? Lookat this cut. She cleaned the wound. She wrapped the wound. And she made her littlest son lie down. She cleaned and wrapped,but she did not call a doctor. My great-grandfather did not call a doctor. It would get better. It would get better even after thefever took, even when, running up the arm, was a bright-red line, an angry vein. The boy would mend until he didn't, so that mygrandfather's littlest brother died from nothing more than a cut to his hand. Lily would not recover. Her husband would notrecover. My grandfather would not recover. But, in a sense, they did. Because on the outside they did. Because it turned into abrain tumor. It turned into what was so clearly God's will and so clearly unstoppable, a malady that begs no other response than atfu-tfu-tfu.22.There were two brothers left. And then there was, a decade or so later, a World War. My grandfather, legally blind, could not besent over. He was drafted, but worked an office job.23.His office mate was a soldier with a glass eye. At night, this soldier would drink and drink, and then when everyone was as drunkas he was, he'd pop out his regular glass eye and pop in one that, instead of an iris, contained one red swirl inside another -- abull's-eye. A little trick to get a laugh, to make the uninitiated think they'd had one too many, which they already had.ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW24.My grandfather's brother was killed in the war. His brother died ghting. That is how it was, until right now.25.My favorite family story didn't come to me through blood. It's about Paul, my grandmother's father, and it came by way of Theo(who married Cousin Margot) and was, for the next thirty years, my grandfather's best friend. Inseparable. They were inseparable,those two.26."Your Great-grandfather Paul, he had a bull's neck. Eighteen, nineteen inches around. He was a tough motherfucker." Theo tellsme this on the day we bury my grandfather. We're outside a restaurant near the graveyard, everyone else has already gone in.Theo and I stand in the parking lot. He stamps his feet against the cold. "One day, after work, me and your grandfather and 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/7/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Sidewe went to a bar for the train workers. We were sitting at the bar, the three of us, and the man right next to your greatgrandfather, he turns to Paul and says, 'You know what the problem with this place is?' Your great-grandfather sizes him up.'What's the problem?' he says. 'I'd like to know.' So the man tells him. 'Too many Jews,' he says. Your great-grandfather puts downhis drink. He's still sitting, mind you. Still facing forward and seated on his barstool. Without even much of a look, he balls up a st, and he just pops the guy -- crosswise -- just clocks that guy right in the jaw. Sitting down! And then your great-grandfatherpicks up his drink like it's nothing, and he throws it back. One quick punch, and he knocked him out cold." Theo shakes his headin remembering. "That mutt just fell off his stool like a sack of corn."27.And I can't even handle it, it's so good a story. "What'd you do?" I say. "What happened?" And Theo is laughing. "What do youthink?" Theo says. "I said, 'Let's get the fuck out of here.' Then me and your grandfather, we grabbed Paul and got the hell out ofthat bar."28.And what can I contribute to my own family history, what stories have I witnessed rsthand? I can tell you about breakfast. Mygrandfather cooked like nobody's business. And, above all, it was breakfast he did best. Burnt coffee and burnt eggs and baconburnt black. Bacon that we did not eat as a religious family -- though our mouths watered at the smell. When we stayed at mygrandparents' (my parents, my brother, and me), we'd wake to a cloud of burnt-bacon smoke lling the house. It would summonus, cartoonlike, lifting us with a curling nger of smoke, from bed.29.Right before the end of things, Bean and I walk to Greenpoint to buy chocolates at one of the Polish stores. We pass a Ukrainiangrocery, which reminds Bean of her Ukie parts. She tells me of a great-uncle, a butcher, who slipped and fell into a vat of boilinghams. He was dead in an instant, leaving eight children behind. "Even your bad stories are good," I tell her. "A very bad story," sheagrees. And I add, upon consideration, "That's possibly the least Jewish way to die." "Yes," she says. "Not the traditional recipe forJews." And looking around at all the Polish stores, I agree. "Traditionally, yes, correct. Jews go in the oven. Pagans, burnt at thestake. And Ukrainian uncles . . . " "Boiled," she says. "Boiled alive."ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/8/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideRODERICK MILLS30.Theo tells me this: When he was three, he was left alone in his family's little bungalow in Denver. "Still standing," he says. "They'vetorn down practically all of them, but that one still stands." In his parents' bedroom, under his father's pillow, he found a loadedgun. Theo took the gun. He aimed at the window, at the clock, and then took aim at the family dog, a sweet, dumb old beagleasleep next to the bed. He pulled the trigger; Theo shot that dog through his oppy ear. The bullet lodged in the oor. "You killedhim?" I ask. "No, no, the dog was ne as ne can be -- ne but for a perfect circle through that ear."Sammy (the dog) just opened his sad, milky eyes, looked at Theo, and went back to sleep.31.Cousin Jack stands with me while Theo tells that story. Jack doesn't believe it. "What about kickback?" he says. "You were all ofthree. Should have shot you across the room. You'd have a doorknob in your ass until this day.""A .22," Theo says. "There doesn't have to be much kick. A .22-short wouldn't have to knock over a ea.""Still," Jack says. "A little boy. Hard to believe it.""I guess I handled it," Theo says, and looks off. And to me, there is nothing in that look but honesty. "I must have handled it," Theosays, "because I still remember the feel of that a4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/9/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideRODERICK MILLS32.It is "the feel of that shot" that does it. It is "the feel of that shot" that undoes another sixty years for Jack. Because out of nowhere,he is talking again, Jack who does not keep secrets -- or keeps them for half a century until suddenly the truth appears. "Terrible,"Jack says. "It was a terrible phone call to get, I can still remember. I was the one who picked up the phone."33."What phone?" I say. "What call? What terrible?" I rush things out, desperate for any history to put things in place. I'm sure thatI've already scared the story off with my eagerness, my panic. I'm sure it's about Abner, about the little boy dying."The call about your grandfather's brother.""About Abner?" I say, because I can't keep my mouth shut, can't wait."No," he says. "About Bennie. The call from your grandfather to tell me Bennie had 1
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side34.Margot is now standing there, her arm hooked through Theo's, her face full of concern. "You got the call about Bennie being killedin the war?""Yes," Jack says. Then, "No.""You didn't get it?" she says."I did. I got the call. But it wasn't the war.""He was killed in the war," Margot says. "In Holland.""He was buried in Holland," Jack says. "Not killed there. And he wasn't killed in the war. It was after.""After.""After the ghting. After the end of the war. His gun went off on guard duty.""You always said," Margot says, incredulously, "everyone always said: Killed in Holland during the war."35.Jack puts a hand on my shoulder, hearing Margot but talking to me. " 'Guard duty,' is what your grandfather told me that day. 'Anaccident.' Then, a few months later, we're out in my garage -- I remember this perfect. I'm holding a carburetor, and he takes it,and he's looking at it like it's a kidney or something, weighing it in his hand. 'It was a truck,' he says. 'Bennie asleep in the back,coming off guard duty. Something joggled, something red, and Bennie shot through the head.' "It's Theo who speaks: "That's one in a million, that kind of accident. Spent my life around guns."ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW"It is," Jack says. "One in a million. Maybe more."36.What I'm thinking -- and maybe it's the way my head works, maybe it's just the way my synapses re -- but in this Pat Tillman,quagmire-of-Iraq world, I'm thinking, I don't like the sound of it. And maybe I'm being truly paranoid. It is, as I said, sixty yearslater. The idea that it already sounds funny, and already is the cut hand turned brain tumor, is not for me to think. And then Jacksays, "I never did like the sound of it. That story never sat right."37.Margot says, "I don't know why your grandfather never visited." "There was talk," Jack says. "Right after. But then, like everythingelse in this family" -- and no one has ever said such a thing before, no one ever acknowledged the not-acknowledging -- "it just gotput away and then it was 1
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side38.I'm in Holland on book tour. I'm at the Hotel Ambassade in Amsterdam, eating copious amounts of Dutch cheese and making therounds. There is one day off. One day free if I want to see the Night Watch or the red lights or to go walk the canals and get high.My publisher, he offers me all these things. "No thank you," I say. "I'm going to Maastricht to visit a grave."RODERICK MILLS39.When you tell the Americans you are coming, the caretaker goes out and does something special. He rubs sand into the marker ofyour dead. The markers are white marble, and the names, engraved, do not show -- white on white, a striking eld of namelessmarkers. But with the sand rubbed, the names and the dates, they stand out. So you walk the eld of crosses looking for 1
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Sidestars. When you nd your star and see the toasted-sand warmness of the name, you feel, in the strangest way, as if you're beingreceived as much as you're there to pay tribute. It's a very nice touch -- a touch that will last until the rst rain.40.Do you want to know what I felt? Do you want to know if I cried? We don't share such things in my family -- we don't tell thismuch even. Already I've gone too far. And put being a man on top of it; compound the standard secretiveness and shut-down-nessof my family with manhood. It makes for another kind of close-to-the-vest, another type of emotional distance, so that my Bosniannever knew what was really going on inside.41.This happened at the bridge club, back in '84 or '85. My grandparents are playing against Cousin Theo and Joe Gorback. (Margotnever plays cards.) Right when it's old Joe's turn to be the dummy, he keels over and dies. The whole club waits for theparamedics and the gurney, and then the players play on -- all but for my grandparents' table, short one man.They wait on the director. Wait for instruction.And Theo looks at my grandparents, and looks at his partner's cards laid out, and over at the dead man's tuna sandwich, halfeaten. Theo reaches across for the untouched half, he picks it up and eats it. "Jesus, Theo," is what my grandfather says. And Theosays, "It's not like it's going to do Joe any good.""Still, Theo. A dead man's sandwich.""No one's forcing you," he says. "You're welcome to sit quiet, or you can help yourself to a fry."ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/13/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideRODERICK MILLS42.My grandfather wasn't superstitious. But it's that half sandwich, he's convinced, that brings it on Theo -- a curse. That's what hesays when Theo parks his car at the top of the hill over by the Pie Plate and forgets to put his emergency brake on. He's headingon down to the restaurant when he looks back up to see his car lurch and start rolling. And he still claims it's the fastest he everran in his life. Theo gets run over by his own Volvo. He breaks his back, though you'd never tell to look at him today.43.My couch is ninety-two inches, it's a deep-green three-cushion. It seats hundreds. But that's not why I got it. I got it because, lyingdown the long way, in the spooning-in-front-of-a-movie way, in the head-to-toe lying with a pair of lamps burning and a pair ofpeople reading, it ts me and it ts another -- it ts her -- really well.44.She is gone. She is gone, and she will be surprised that I'm alive to write this -- because she, and everyone who knows me, didn'tthink I'd survive it. That I can't be alone for a minute. That I can't manage a second of silence. A second of peace. That to breathe,I need a second set of lungs by my side. And to have a feeling? An emotion? No one in my family will show one. Love, yes. Oh,we're Jews, after all. There's tons of loving and complimenting, tons of kissing and hugging. But I mean any of us, any of myblood, to sit and face reality, to sit alone on a couch without a partner and to think the truth and feel the truth, it cannot be done.I sure can't do it. And she knew I couldn't do it. And that's why it ended.45.It ended because another person wants you to need to be with them, with her, speci c -- not because you're afraid to be alone.46.My grandmother had one job in her life. She worked as a bookkeeper at a furniture store for a month before my grandfatherproposed. The owner proposed rst. She turned the owner 4727/everything-i-know-nathan-englander-0708/14/21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side47.She had another job. I thought it was her job, and I put it here because I put this scene into every story I write. I lay it into everysetting, attribute it to every character. It's a moment that I add to every life I draw, and then cut -- for it contains no meaningbeyond its meaning to me. It comes from my grandmother and her Mr. Lincoln roses, my grandmother collecting Japanese beetlesin the yard. She'd pick the beetles off the leaves and put them in a mason jar to die. And I'd help her. And I'd get a penny for everybeetle, because, she told me, she got a penny for every beetle from my grandfather. I believed, until I was an adult, that this washer job. A penny a beetle during rose-growing season.RODERICK /21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideAbout sacks of corn and the one time I felt like a man: My grandfather and I drive out to the farm stand. It's open but no one's init. There's a coffee tin lled with money, under a sign that says SELF-SERVE. Folks are supposed to weigh things themselves andleave money themselves and, when needed, make change. This is how the owner runs it when she's short-staffed. We'd come outfor corn, and the pickings are slim, and that's when the lady pulls up in her truck. She gets out, makes her greetings, and dropsthe gate on the back. And in the way industrious folks function, she's hauling out burlap sacks before a full minute has passed. Mygrandfather says to me, "Get up there. Give a hand."49.I hop up into the bed of the truck and I toss those sacks of corn down. It's just the thing an able young man is supposed to do -and I'd never, ever have known. But I don't hesitate. I empty the whole thing with her, feeling quiet and strong.ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW50.They are sacks of Silver Queen and Butter & Sugar, the sweetest corn in the world. She tells us to take what we want, but mygrandfather will have no such thing. We ll a paper sack to over owing and pay our money. At my grandparents', I shuck corn onthe back steps, the empty beetle jar tucked in the bushes beside me and music from the transistor coming through the screen ofthe porch. And -- suburban boy, Jewish boy -- I've never felt like I had greater purpose, never so much felt like an American man.51.The woman I love, the Bosnian, she is not Jewish. All the years I am with her, to my family, it's as if she is not. My family so goodat it now. My family so masterful. It's not only the past that can be altered and forgotten and lost to the world. It's real time now.It's streaming. The present can be undone, too.52.And I still love her. I love you, Bean. (And even now, I don't say it straight. Let me try one more time: I love you, Bean. I say it.) And Iplace this in the middle of a short story in the midst of our modern YouTube, iTunes, plugged-in lives. I might as well tell her righthere. No one's looking; no one's listening. There can't be any place better to hide in plain sight.53.On Thanksgiving, this very one, I am looking for a gravy boat in the attic. I nd the gravy boat and my karate uniform (green belt,brown stripe) and a shoe box marked DRESSER. Lifting the lid, I understand: It's the remains of my grandfather's towering chestof drawers -- a life compacted, sifted down. Inside, folded up, is a child's drawing: a man on a chair, a hat, two arms, two legs -but one of those legs sticks straight out to the side, as if the man were trying to salute with it. The leg at a ridiculous andimpossible angle. It's my mother's drawing. She hasn't seen it in years. She doesn't remember lling that 21
5/7/2021Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's SideThe drawing is of Great-grandpa Paul. "Hit by a train," she says. And already -- in a loving, not-at-all-a
There is clearly love between them. 2. If we weave through the crowd with a little gusto, we'll make progress. . "You can't, not really, know nothing! Tell me about your mother. Tell me an anecdote right now." 5/7/2021 Nathan Englander Short Story - Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side
